


put a little love here in my void

by hedgebitch



Category: The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/F, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:40:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23782501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hedgebitch/pseuds/hedgebitch
Summary: Loving Nell is hard. It might be the hardest thing Theo’s ever done.
Relationships: Theodora/Eleanor "Nell" Vance
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	put a little love here in my void

Loving Nell is hard. It might be the hardest thing Theo’s ever done.

It’s not something she can explain to anyone, not when most days Nell is sunshine and daisies and spinning around the kitchen with her after a glass of wine. But some mornings Nell will turn to her, before the bread in the toaster is even warm, and tell her the most horrific things.

“I dreamt that I devoured you in my sleep,” she says on one of those mornings, without even a second’s thought, and Theo’s mind lingers on that all day long. She finds herself having to throw out every painting she’d started that day, setting ‘em all on fire in the dumpster in the alley in the hopes that Nell’s words will burn away along with the canvases.

She thinks about leaving, if only for a little while—packing up a suitcase to go spend a few days calling on an old friend. She’s so ashamed to have even thought of it that when Nell gets home, Theo buries herself in her before she’s hardly crossed the threshold.

Usually, Theo prefers to take her time: loving Nell might be difficult, but making love to her never has been. Tonight the pressure of her guilt turns Theo to a woman possessed, only easing once Nell begins to come apart against their kitchen floor.

“If I’d known you’d be waiting like this, I might’ve tried a little harder to catch the earlier bus,” Nell says, once she’s regained control of her breath.

In a few more moments she’ll come to her senses and remove Theo’s head from her breast no matter how gently she’s currently laying kisses to soft flesh. She’ll insist on cleaning up, on propriety for propriety’s sake, even with the curtains drawn.

“Isn’t the whole point of this that we don’t fuck like men?” Nell had joked once, when Theo had gotten her into quite the precarious position in their building’s stairwell in a moment of desperation wrought by separation—a trip Nell had taken to see her sister that had been unexpectedly extended.

“Sweetheart, I’ve seen two men fuck,” Theo had replied.

She thinks about that now, while Nell runs her fingers across Theo’s hair, preparing to push her away. She could’ve said any words in the world, and she’d settled on those—on a reminder of her experiences, her impurity. A reminder that no matter how hard she might try, Nell could never devour as much as Theo has devoured from herself.

**Author's Note:**

> wrote this in a frenzy after watching the haunting (1999). idk folks. idk. as always i'm on tumblr @[nightflings](https://nightflings.tumblr.com) if you'd like to yell at me. title from paper bag by fiona apple because i'm emotionally messy


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